An economically rational selection of submarine hull materials

The selection of an external pressure vessel material is described. Failures in the rupture and buckle modes are discussed, as well as the problem of submarine hull hydrostatics. A spherical geometry admits simplification to allow focus on the economic problem. The economic cost function is comprised of 28 variables: the market prices of the alloy components, some material properties of the alloy, and various extrinsic data. A variant of the exhaustive search method was preferred due to the discontinuous nature of the price data. A large database of alloys is searched, preliminary results obtained for a selection of 19 AISI alloys in the 300 and 400 series, and conclusions drawn.